One and a half years ago, I and some other colleagues happened to be in the middle of a group of mothers whose children were enrolled in a school located in a rural area, in one province of an eastern part of Indonesia.
The majority of those women are primary school graduates. I was part of a team that visited the school to assess the quality improvement of learning and teaching processes, after one year of assistance of a development program provided to the school.
The mothers were all in the same view that provision of development assistance has resulted in better learning outcomes for their children; they cited their children were more cheerful, eager to know anything, and had more motivation to go to school compared to the previous time before the introduction of the assistance.
One of the other positives resulted from this assistance also, according to the mothers, that the teachers were no longer applying physical punishment to pupils.
Following this feedback, the team continued with the question, “What about at home, do you beat your children for punishment?”.
The mothers glanced at each other before replying almost like a choir, “They are our kids, it’s our right to beat them if they are doing wrong”.
The team was stunned for a while, before further exploring and found out that apparently beating, for less educated people such as those mothers, is a simple solution they can think of, the only effective way they knew, to make their children follow what they thought was appropriate discipline.
They don’t have a proper understanding that this practise would harm their children, let alone knowledge on legal consequences of abusing children through this practise.
Most of the parents, particularly those who have better living standards and are better educated compared to those mothers, would immediately and confidently consider if not — in any way — in the same degree with those mothers in educating our children.
However, deeper thought may be needed before an immediate conclusion that we are really better than them.
Physical punishment may be totally out of our way in educating children, as we are all fully aware of the negative impact of this, but we may unintentionally do other things that more or less are as harmful as beating.
With the intention to guard their safety, we may guide our children to only interact with people we think are at the same social level as ours, without realizing that this will lead them to be less sociable people, and turn them into less sympathetic individuals.
We may think providing our children with fancy toys, sophisticated games equipment, and guarding them with excellent facilities will keep them happy and turn them into “stay-at-home kids” but these will restrict them in exploring opportunities to exercise their wisdom.
Some parents may have the view that fulfilling all of their children’s wishes is a way to express their love, without a further thought that this might weaken their struggle, increase their egos and create impulsive behaviour.
Packing your children time with other “productive and educational” things such as various courses, on top of their already-long schooling time, and denying opportunities for them to be more exposed to life, may guarantee their future livelihood, but won’t provide them with enough life lessons.
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The recommended way in communicating with children is to provide sympathy on whichever situation they are in.
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Most parents may only associated children’s education as an obligation, which may often lead to the perception that parents have the rights to determine what they think most appropriate for their children, and set aside the fact that children have the whole integrity as separate individuals.
I remember a few years ago attending parental training about how best to communicate with and educate your children.
The training introduced several taboos in communicating with children, which includes telling, advising, leading, directing, scolding and any others, which in fact, is commonly used most by parents.
The recommended way in communicating with children is to provide sympathy on whichever situation they are in, exploring their needs and problems, then facilitating them to have their own best solutions and opinions.
This communication style will turn them into individuals who have own integrity, stronger characters, problem solving capabilities.
It will also build their sense of empathy.
The most influential aspects that parents can do in education for their children is by showing a real example through a good way of life and behaviour.
At the end of training, most participants concluded that no matter how advanced you were in communication methodologies, or how high your economic ability to “serve” your children was, the most important things to educate to your children were patience, and a strong commitment to always be a good human.
I would like to close this article by declaring that I am not, at all, trying to teach other parents, but instead warning myself to continuously commit to improving myself in order to better educate my children.
Happy children’s day!
The writer is a mother of two children, working with an international donor agency. The views expressed are her own.
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